Little is known currently about the effect of scale and scope on productivity and innovation in healthcare. We propose using unique and hitherto untapped Census economic files on the healthcare sector to answer these questions.…Read More
I quantify the impact of trade secret protection on labor outsourcing, and consequently, on aggregate productivity.…Read More
Commuting is costly for employees, but is it costly for employers in terms of lost productivity? We study the causal effects of commuting distance on inventor productivity. Specifically, we estimate how inventor productivity changes when their employer relocates.…Read More
Evan Rawley, Associate Professor of Management, University of Connecticut, and Robert Seamans, Stern School of Business, NYU Abstract: We study how internal agglomeration—geographic clustering of business establishments owned by the same parent company—influences establishment productivity. Using Census microdata on the population of U.S. hotels from 1987-2007, we find that doubling the…Read More
The extent to which local incentive policies (such as subsidies and tax credits) are effective at spurring new centers of innovation, and whether these incentives induce overall productivity growth or just a shift of production from one region to another, is the subject of this proposal.…Read More
In 2011, California Governor Jerry Brown recognized several of the state’s existing firm incentive policies aimed at catalyzing innovative activity in the state, to be ineffectual, citing poor incentive design.…Read More
The development and adoption of new innovative technologies confront firms into making decisions in highly uncertain environment. Past experience and the available public information are seldom sufficient to support firms in their decision process; firms ability to experiment and produce new information is then paramount. …Read More
The extent to which workers adjust to labor market disruptions in light of increasing pressure from trade and automation commands widespread concern. Yet little is known about efforts that deliberately target the adjustment process. …Read More
Economic nationalism is an ideology which favors policies that emphasize domestic control of the economy. Previous work has documented that firm innovation/investment and firm productivity are important for economic growth. Hence, understanding how barriers to firm innovation/investment and restrictions on firm productivity is crucial to the study of development. …Read More
While there is overwhelming support for the negative consequences of product recalls, empirical evidence of operational drivers of recalls is almost nonexistent. In this study, we identify product variety, plant variety, and capacity utilization as drivers of subsequent manufacturing-related recalls.…Read More
This article investigates the microeconomics underlying the spectacular growth of productivity in China’s manufacturing sector over the period 1998–2007. Underlying the aggregate evidence of such dramatic growth, one observes a large, albeit shrinking, intra-sectoral heterogeneity coupled with an even more important process of learning and knowledge accumulation.…Read More
Product launch—an event when a new product debuts for production in a plant—is an important phase in product development. But launches disrupt manufacturing operations, resulting in productivity losses. Using data from North American automotive plants from years 1999–2007, we estimate that a product launch entails an average productivity loss of 12%–15% at the plant level.…Read More
